D.Mont.: 27 minute stop not overlong on these facts; applying Rodriguez

Two days after Rodriguez, the District of Montana applies it finding a 27 minute traffic stop reasonable under the facts of that case. United States v. Iturbe-Gonzalez, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53536 (D.Mont. April 23, 2015):

Trooper Amundson, furthermore, was free to inquire about unrelated matters while processing the warning card so long as these inquiries did not measurably prolong the stop. Rodriguez, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2807, 2015 WL 1780927, *5. The majority of the interaction inside of the police vehicle occurred while Trooper Amundson waited for a return on the records check. As a records check is part of the “ordinary inquiries incident to [the traffic] stop,” 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2807, [WL] at *6 (quoting Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 408, 125 S. Ct. 834, 160 L. Ed. 2d 842 (2005), Iturbe-Gonzalez cannot complain about any of the inquiries posed to him during this period, because these inquiries into unrelated matters did not measurably prolong the stop. Furthermore, all of the questions Trooper Amundson asked in the five minutes prior to requesting the records check were asked while Trooper Amundson examined Iturbe-Gonzalez’s driver’s license, registration, and insurance cards, and were either directly related to these documents or were permissible traffic safety-related inquiries of a general nature, which included Iturbe-Gonzalez’s travel plans and travel objectives. Such questions are permissible under Rodriguez, see 2015 U.S. LEXIS 2807, [WL] at *3, and any suggestion to the contrary would ask that officers issuing traffic violations temporarily become traffic ticket automatons while processing a traffic violation, as opposed to human beings. See also Hibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nevada, Humbold County, 542 U.S. 177, 185, 124 S. Ct. 2451, 159 L. Ed. 2d 292 (2004) (“Asking questions is an essential part of police investigations.”) Accordingly, the Court concludes that this portion of the detention was not unreasonably prolonged.

Trooper Amundson also did not need to Mirandize Iturbe-Gonzalez after issuing him the traffic warning and before asking him additional questions because Iturbe-Gonzalez was free to leave at that point and the encounter thus became consensual. Not only was Iturbe-Gonzalez not in custody for purposes of Miranda, he was not seized under the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, Trooper Amundson did not need to Mirandize Iturbe-Gonzalez after issuing the warning citation, nor did he need reasonable suspicion to perform the additional questioning.